How I’d Explain the Debt Ceiling Crisis

If I were John Boehner, Speaker of the House:

“As you know, the Republican Leadership has been trying desperately since we were elected to the majority in the House of Representatives, to bring sound financial policy to our government.

But now, the President, the pilot of this great big corporate jet that we’re all riding in as a nation, has come back from his lofty perch in the nose of the plane to inform us that we’re running out of fuel, and we’re going down. Instead of telling us he’s going to throttle back, save the fuel we have left, and look for some soft turf for an emergency landing - he wants to know what WE’RE going to do about it. Turns out, he didn’t file a flight plan. He didn’t calculate how much fuel we’d need for our trip. And, he dumped a most of our fuel while we were in flight. Makes us wonder what he was thinking. Naturally, we make our recommendations - come down to earth, throttle back, measure your resources.

But instead, he demands to fill our fuel tanks with blood from the biggest and strongest of the passengers, the very one’s who’ll help us evacuate if we come down hard. Even if it would work, there’s not enough blood in all of them to make much difference. It would just make it worse for all of us. Clearly, it’s in our own best interests to resist that idea.

Since we have only a majority in the House it’s easy to accuse us of just blocking progress. But the polls show that most of you understand that what we’re blocking is just more of the same “tax and spend” that got us into this mess in the first place. On the other hand, what we’re trying to provide is leadership that you are not seeing from the President and the Democrat-controlled Senate. I deeply regret having to say those words because we Americans have a strong tradition of looking to the holder of the nation’s highest office with a respect that ordinarily would cause one to forebear such direct criticism. We have reached a point with his conduct, however, where such silence concerning it becomes tantamount to a lie.

For example, unlike the presidents before him, this President has failed to produce a budget for the operation of his government. The failure to lead this country financially is dangerous and irresponsible, and the condition we find ourselves in today is all the proof you need. Our national security is impacted by our financial stability.

But to threaten to not pay our military, or to criticise us when we try to step in and attempt fill the leadership vacuum makes us suspicious of the president’s abilities and intentions. We ask, “If he could lead, wouldn’t we be seeing it?” If he could do something good for the nation, wouldn’t he?

Here are four facts that are not in dispute:

-In just two years, this President has driven our nation deeper into debt than all the presidents before him combined.

-This President has failed to produce a budget for the operation of government.

-This President has given away the nations wealth on the promise of rapid reductions in unemployment.

-The President has failed to put before the American people any concrete plan, meaning even a single sentence in written form, as a proposal for solving the debt crisis.

This financial crisis is of his making. These four facts cast doubt on his ability and sincerity and may explain why he has been unable to make anything positive happen.

Of course, I fully expect a shallow response to what I’ve just said. There will be those standing in the midst of the disaster crying, “how dare we speak ill of the President.” We’ll be upbraided by the President’s minions and the media sycophants for blaming him instead of addressing the problem. You’ll pardon us if we ignore that, if we refuse to engage in those diversions and instead insist that you pundits get serious and do your jobs.

You see, the facts are not in dispute. It IS the President’s problem. Now, we must try to solve it without his help and with our best ideas and intentions. We can’t all be the pilot, so we’ll have to do it somehow from the back of the plane, with the people’s help.”

The Hidden Problem with The Budget Deal

I used to produce TV advertising for a car dealer and as I write this I'm reminded of the saying, "It isn't the deal you got - it's the deal you think you got." In other words, even if you paid way too much, if you think you got a good deal, that's all that matters. I work with a guy who once visited a dealer and told him, "I only have $18,000 to spend, so I want your best deal." Guess how much his van cost.

But, I'm not going to pass judgment here on the deal Speaker Boehner thinks he got. Because we are still spending more than we collect, I do question the level of accomplishment. What really bothers me is quite different than the substance of the deal.

What really bothers me is the GOP's inability to communicate the many persuasive arguments they had in their pockets - that I believe would have allowed them to achieve much more than they did - by getting the preponderance of public opinion on their side. They have to learn how to fight and argue in ways that capture the public's imagination.

For example, their sole argument was framed around the two words, "cutting spending." That same rhetoric was employed the last time the two parties squared off over keeping the government open. By changing the meme, the GOP could have made it much more difficult for the Democrats to say, "There you go again." For example, if the GOP had said they are "cutting the cost of government," it would have more squarely represented what was actually happening, and it would have reinforced the reasonableness of the Tea Party's demands to cut the size and cost of government. We know the Democrats cannot successfully argue against cutting the cost of government. Everybody wants that.

Further, cutting the cost of government does not imply cutting services. For example, when you shop, if you ask for a discount it doesn't mean you get less of an item - it simply means you pay less for an item.

The GOP never brought the argument out of the stratosphere and down to the level where most people could undertand it. For example, why did they never take the two-percent Boehner was asking for and related it to a single dollar? Instead they were always relating it to several trillion dollars. How reasonable and easy it is to understand when you hear, "Speaker Boehner wants to cut the budget by 2 cents on the dollar." Immediately opposition seems unreasonable. Heck, he could have started at a nickel using that kind of rhetoric.

When the Democrats complained about cutting funding for Planned Parenthood and NPR, the GOP should have responded, "But they're not government agencies." You Democrats who are always talking about the sin of giving tax breaks to special interests have to be willing to do what you ask of others. Show us by your example. Let's see you have the guts to cut spending for your own special interests.

And when Harry Reid said the GOP didn't care about women, why didn't the GOP remind Mr. Reid that his Nevada is where politicians look the other way when women prostitute themselves. Is that how Mr. Reid shows his respect for women? Let's see a show of hands of all the Democrats who believe that prostitution in Nevada demonstrates a proper respect for women - if you do, you should be voting for Planned Parenthood - it'll help keep Harry Reid's prostitutes in business.

Why didn't Speaker Boehner simply say, "Look. Most people in this country are opposed to abortion. Most people in this country don't think the government should pay for it and most people think it's bad enough that it exists. Planned Parenthood is simply going to have to find another way to pay for abortions. That's what the people want and, while I cannot speak for the Democrat party, the Republicans are determined, to the best of our ability, to represent the people. As far as other health-related issues are concerned, there are plenty of places for people to go and we have many entitlement programs in place already for providing health care to the indigent. If those aren't working, then perhaps Mr. Reid should not have advocated so vehemently recently for more government care - but less.

See. There are lots of great arguments that could have been made to appeal to the public. They should be being made right now. Today. Because the fight has just begun.

*crickets*

Israel Security Is real. TSA is not.

Fifteen Hours ago I went through security at Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv. As I entered the airport, I was interviewed by a 20-something female who spoke perfect English, Hebrew and, no doubt a couple other languages. First she carefully checked my facial features - glancing back and forth three time - while holding my passport photo at the same elevation as my face. She asked me, by name, how I was doing, and she watched my face as I answered. I suppose if I didn’t react with familiarity to my own name I was to be quickly yanked from the line. I passed the test. 

She asked me questions about who I was traveling with, where I’d been, and if I had been responsible for my suitcase the entire time. Once satisfied, she motioned me over to an x-ray machine with a conveyor belt. A 20-something young man took my bag and labeled it, he scanned the bar code on the label and sent me to another line.

At that checkpoint, I took my suitcase to a countertop that had a permanent lectern of frosted glass elevated on stainless tubing. The lectern held touch screen displays left and right like an open book. As I approached my bag tag was scanned and the image produced by the x-ray machine was displayed after a couple finger-taps on the screen. Another 20-something female asked me to open my suitcase and I complied. She checked the screen and oriented the suitcase to the image. The dialog went something like this-

Her: (She picks a package out from between some clothes I had packed around it) What’s in here?
Me: A bowl.
Her: Where did you get it?
Me: I bought it in the Galilee, in Tabgha.
Her: Did you pack your suitcase yourself?
Me: Yes.
Her: Did anyone give you anything as a gift?
Me: No.
Her: Did you have your suitcase in your control the whole time you were in Israel?
Me: Yes.
Her: What is in these paper bags?
Me: Those are olive wood carvings.
Her: Where did you get them?
Me: Bethlehem.
Her: Did you buy other things?
Me: Yes.
Her: What did you buy?
Me: More of the same. Small items, mostly - souvenirs.

Her: Okay, you can close your bag.



What else do they do at Ben Gurion? They profile. Another group of caucasian Americans who had an Asian-American leader saw him pulled aside and interviewed for a half hour. A woman who left Israel a few days before her husband was interviewed alone, in a private room, by two men - one of whom was armed with an automatic weapon. She was repeatedly asked where he was, who he was with, what Arabs he knew, who his friends were in Israel and then she was asked the same questions over and over.

They use spies. There are people who walk around as though travelers, sitting at gates, watching faces and listening to conversations, who never leave the airport. I have seen them myself at JFK. After several hours I realized that some of the people I had noted who were meandering though the crowds waiting for flights to Israel were disappearing into a secure room where for just a moment, I saw several workers looking through suitcases. It was in a room with one-way glass and a combination of lighting and reflection allowed me to see for just a couple seconds. But it was clear as a bell what was going on.

But, there’s no pat down. There’s no radiation. No shoes come off, no computers come out of their cases, jackets are sent through the x-ray, but no belts come off. There’s a walk-through metal detector. And there are more questions at passport control.

It’s intelligent, respectful, and it works.

On the other hand, I was required to change terminals at JFK and just 12 hours after going through Israeli security, I went through TSA security. It might as well have been another planet, the differences were so extreme.

TSA eyes were not scanning me, my face, my demeanor. They were concentrating on what they’ve been trained to look at - paperwork, screens and images - processes. Am I putting things in trays that should go through the conveyor trayless? Yeah, that’ll help spot a terrorist. One of my traveling companions - a grandfatherly white man - was patted down. Ridiculous. All incidents have been caused by dark skinned, young Muslim men - none by 60-year old white German-American grandfathers. What you see in our airports is not security - it’s politics.

I had a plastic bag with two pounds of Dead Sea mud in an Army green Alice Pack that I carried on my back. The Israeli’s didn’t care - but the Americans missed it. It’s a liquid, a colloid, a prohibited soupy, viscous chemical mix, and they never even saw it. I know why, and if I wanted to transport an explosive, I know how it could be done now. Essentially, it slipped through because there’s no passion in the US for finding and outsmarting the terrorists - TSA just follows orders and uses no intuitive processes - because the TSA doesn’t really believe there are people who want to kill us.

That’s why we’ve had several terrorist incidents on our airplanes in just the past few years and why TSA has never caught a terrorist. The Israeli record is spotless.

Ding Dong the Bitch is Dead

Democrats and the mainstream media are whistling past the graveyard. They’re talking about Obamacare like it’s a tennis match. Durbin just yesterday, and others, are referencing the won/lost court case standings. Yes, two Federal Judges have ruled that the Affordable Care Act (gag) is legit - and two have ruled against the government.

But that’s not the way these things work. This is a lot more like hunting than tennis.

Two Judges decided not to shoot at the Healthcare Law. They left it alone. That has no impact on the law. It doesn’t make it stronger, and it doesn’t detract from it. It has no effect.

However, another judge did take a shot at the bill and wounded it (the Virginia case). That had an effect and the government is forced to appeal that case.

Judge Vinson, the Federal Judge hearing the case brought by Florida and joined by 25 other states, ruled the Act unconstitutional. He further said that he would not enjoin the government from enforcing the Act because he had rendered it null and void. In other rather uncivil words, he shot it in the heart at close range and killed it. It does not exist anymore. It is not a law, it has no force and it is as though it never passed.

The government hopes to win an appeal and win at the Supreme Court, but that is unlikely.

What must happen now is for pressure to be brought to bear on the Administration to agree to take the case immediately to the Supreme Court. The Court could hear and render a verdict on the case in less than two months, saving the country a lot of pain and money in litigation.

Here are two ways to pressure the Administration: First, the victorious states must announce that they accept the verdict and will not implement any of the mandates provided for in the former law. In other words, they show they understand how to win. Then, the House should refuse to consider any legislation until the Administration agrees to fast-track the case to the Supreme Court. I believe the House could appeal to the Court to do so because they should have standing in the matter - they created the bill.

Meanwhile, it would be better for McCain and Graham and Hatch to just keep quiet. Hatch’s plan to repeal the individual mandate would leave the question of Congress’ Commerce Clause power undecided by the Supreme Court. We need the Court to address and roll back that authority. And stripping an act which no longer exists of its authority is simply silly, a futile exercise. You guys don’t have any idea how winners act, do you. Buh-Bye.

This Should Scare You

All of us who have spoken publicly know that there’s the rare occasion when you must speak extemporaneously - and there's the norm, when you have time to prepare enough to make the speech look extemporaneous. Those are the best speeches.

It’s been 48 hours - enough time to let it settle in - since the State of the Union speech. My initial impressions have not been modified by the pundits, but they have been generally confirmed.

Essentially, it was a very poor speech. It rambled, lacked cohesion - even a theme - and it was full of inherent contradictions or statements that were false on their face. Obama talked about the country having great debt - yet he never took responsibility. Obama claimed we needed a Sputnik moment to replicate the commercial successes of the Space Program - yet he never mentioned gutting NASA’s budget and essentially shutting it down. Obama talked about American exceptionalism - but he praised not only the failed Soviet Union, but modern Communist China. Obama called for a budget freeze but in the same breath referred to it as a budget cut - and at the same time insisted we needed to hire 100,000 new teachers. His examples of American ingenuity, which he employed as a lever for more “investment,” meaning taxing and spending, were achievements which had been accomplished by people and businesses without any support or interference from the government. His joke about salmon fishing and canning regulation also fell flat - partly because it wasn’t funny, but mostly because he was making light of how his cronies spend most of their time - regulating, legislating and controlling other people’s lives. It was like he was mocking his audience.

But, what I haven’t heard said is how thin the speech was. It lacked the trappings of leadership. It was absent the heart-felt rhetoric or emotion or a personal conviction. I don’t think even Obama believed what he was saying. In fact, I’m certain he didn’t.

I remember a friend, a performer, once telling me that when you perform - you must not hold back. The audience can tell when you’r holding something back and they won’t like it.

In my opinion, we didn’t hear what Obama is really thinking, what he’s really planning for his next two years. But in our hearts, I suspect we know what it is, and we know for sure, it isn’t good.

Null and Void

Associated Press reported yesterday that several state legislatures are working on bills to nullify Obamacare.


“GOP lawmakers introduced such a measure Wednesday in the Idaho

House, and Alabama, Kansas, Maine, Montana, Oregon, Nebraska, 

Texas and Wyoming are also talking about the idea.”



At least one of those measures would call for the prosecution of anyone - including state officials - who refused to enforce the bill’s provisions. So, they’re serious.

But, according to the AP, “The efforts are completely unconstitutional in the eyes of most legal scholars because the U.S. Constitution deems federal laws ‘the supreme law of the land.’”

But one constitutional scholar disagrees. His name is Thomas Jefferson, he was intimately familiar with the Constitution and served as the third president of the United States. Though some today might regard the opinion of the Associated Press as more credible, in 1799, Jefferson wrote that "nullification ... is the rightful remedy" whenever the Federal government commits an act so egregious that the states cannot allow themselves to be compelled to submit. Jefferson created the doctrine to express his disgust with the Alien and Sedition Acts that were enacted by then-President John Adams during the war with France.

Certainly there is case law that clearly demonstrates the Supreme Court’s opinion that Federal Law supercedes state law. The Supreme Court may or may not one day turn a different direction. But in this case, we’re not looking at a clash between two contradictory laws. Nullification is a rejection of an act by the Federal government. In our opinion, the Constitution. It is, in effect, a means of suing the Federal Government outside of court by expressing simultaneously the state’s and the people’s sovereignty. Both of which, by the way, are guaranteed in the 10th Amendment of the Bill of Rights.

There are already law suits between states and the federal government where the states are suing the Federal government for injurious legislation. Obamacare has recently been the subject of such suits filed by about half the Union. But, is that the only way to stop an out-of-control Federal government?

No. The ratification process enshrined within the Constitution shows that the Framers recognized the power and authority, post confederation, of state sovereignty. They allowed for any part of the Constitution itself to be altered if simply enough state legislatures so desired. That Constitutional authority does not suggest that the Federal Government, its Congress or its Supreme Court is the superior governing body. It suggests the opposite.

This is a very important argument to those of us who see the strength of this nation, believe it or not, in its diversity - cemented by its great brotherhood - formed of a single idea. States that pass nullification laws are expressing their exquisite understanding of our freedom, and their willingness to participate in a Union of States, only as long as they are held sovereign. It is a midway point between oppression and secession.

Cruel and Usual

The shooting at the Safeway may make it more difficult for those who are desperately seeking greater border security by playing into the hands of the Obama Administration and the Liberals who want porous borders. As usual, their minions are out making cruel accusations, trying to stir the pot with perverted statements.

The shootings in Tucson will make it seem to many as creating an extremely difficult situation for those who want more force on the border. Anything seen as presenting a violent potential will be used by the perverted Left as an example of violent speech.

Therefore, the time is right now to get out in front of this argument with some thoughtful and simple-to-understand comments to defeat the Left and rally the people who might otherwise be crestfallen by the turn of events in the face of their dire need for security.

Here are the words that need to be said in order to create a pre-emptive argument:

The lack of focus on the border may have been made even worse by this psychopath’s attack on our Republic. We must not be distracted from the greater peril.
The shooting at the Safeway is over, but the decapitations, the drug trade, the invasion of our sovereignty continues unabated. Will Obama speak to that?
As bad as it was, the shooting at the Safeway pales in comparison to the violence in Mexico that’s behind the drug trade coming across the border.
Why does Obama give more attention to the actions of a psychopath that threatened the life of one Congresswoman than he’s willing to give to the actions of a cartel that threaten entire States?
The Left is quick to make cruel accusations against their fellow Americans, yet where there is real crime, by foreign invaders, they are silent. It is time for them to join Americans everywhere and stand up for our sovereignty.


Oh, and when they make a cruel accusation, don’t address it. Just tell them it’s cruel, which makes it psychopathic - wanting deliberately to hurt innocent people is sick - and that it’s unfounded, and well beneath the standards you have set for yourself for public discourse. That ought to do it.